Cold on the inside
by 4TheLoveOfToast
Summary: Allen couldn't remember what it felt like to be human. He couldn't remember anything at all. Could Lavi help him remember what it meant to be something other than the cold he felt deep down in his heart? Or would he melt too, just like every other thing Lavi touched? Laven AU, Amnesia Patient!Allen, Nurse tech!Lavi. Rated T for language, Allen's traumatic past, and future romance.
1. Prologue

**A/N: Hello there, 4theloveoftoast here. I got stuck in the middle of writing my other story, Pint Sized Trouble, which I'm coauthoring with TrinityValhalla(I write every other chapter, you can yell at me on the even chapters), so here is what might turn out to be a chapter fic. Well, I plan on it being a chapter fic, but you know what they say about good intentions, so we'll see, yeah? **

**Disclaimer: I don't own D gray-man or the characters, though if I did the updates would sure come out a hell of a lot faster. **

Prologue

There was snow. There was snow everywhere.

It was all he could remember as his body turned to ice, and his grey eyes became dull. There was snow.

He was the snow.

* * *

Lavi wearily walked into work, clocking in and entering the changing rooms, shucking out of his clothing and donning the blue scrubs that were his uniform. He was so used to doing the same things, day in and day out, that the routine had his body moving in the mechanical movements that came with repetition. He walked out of the changing room and down the hall, to the reception desk where he grabbed a clipboard. Today he was on pod three, watching the rehab patients. With a sigh, he walked down the hall and put on his game face. Just another day in the loony bin.

* * *

He could feel the paper thinness of his skin. He was on fire. He was melting, melting so fast that he could barely hold himself together. You weren't supposed to bring the snow inside, or it would melt. That was something mothers taught their children from a young age, he knew that.

But still, here he was, surrounded by warmth, so hot, so sweltering, that he couldn't breathe. It was as if all the air had been burned out of his lungs, and he couldn't gasp it in fast enough. He was melting, so fast, too fast.

He couldn't keep himself alive for much longer. You weren't supposed to bring the snow inside.


	2. Chapter 1

**A/N: Well hello there guys! Shout out the people who are actually reading this, and to , for your review. I decided to continue writing this, just for you, champ. Hope you enjoy.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own this series, its lovely characters, or any of the places, yada yada yada. **

**...**

**A**llen Walker wasn't the usual patient. Though, around here, usual was a word not used lightly. In a place that used 'cuckoo for cocoa puffs' as a common descriptor, St. Noir's Order of the mentally compromised was just another drop off box for those inconvenient insane family members. But that wasn't the case here. Allen Walker, a male of undetermined age, was a patient that had been a resident there far longer than anyone could remember. He was just a facet of the hospital, like crooked door or a cracked step. And for as long as anyone had known, he had always been asleep. Paid for by the state, he rested peacefully in his hospital bed, his heart monitor always a steady tempo, a noise that faded into the background, just like his existence.

But today was different.

"_Of course today had to be different,"_ Lavi thought to himself as his usually dull job in pod three was unsettled by the radio call of a code blue, or a cardiac arrest warning. Reading his pager quickly, he swept into room 308, pushing past the other junior aids and techs that had swarmed to the call.

"Get back, get back. Get out of the way, quickly! No crowding, please!" His voice boomed through the din of the chatter that filled the space, catching the other employees' attention and effectively moving them to the sides. On the bed in front of him lay the white haired patient that had never moved in the seven years Lavi had worked there. But today was different. Of course it was.

**T**he clouds were smothering him. It was as if they had come out of the heavens to wrap around his neck, to crawl down his throat and constrict in his chest, to make it impossible for him even to think. He could do nothing but lie helplessly as his own body killed him, starving him for air from the inside out. Panic filled him. The clouds weren't supposed to hurt him. The clouds were what had brought him down to be here, they were what had given him life. They were just another part of his life, a ceiling to his sedimentary existence.

How could the clouds hurt the snow?

**L**avi quickly took the pulse of the patient before him, feeling nothing. Barking a quick order to the nearest hovering nurse to grab a defibrillator, he began CPR. After a minute and a half with no response, he switched to the defibrillator as soon as it arrived. He ripped off the starched white gown to the side of the boy's chest, attaching the pads to his chest before charging the AED. As soon as the light flashed at him, he sent a shock through Allen's chest, waiting, watching, for a breath or even a weak pulse. Nothing. He let the machine charge again, sending another shock. Everyone in the room held their breath, searching for a response. Lavi sent up a silent prayer that the kid wouldn't die on his watch. But still. There was no response. With a heavy heart, he turned off the defibrillator and the screaming heart monitor. Standing for a moment to check all signs, pupil dilation, lack of breath, and lack of pulse, Lavi sighed.

"I'm pronouncing him dead. Allen Walker, time of death 3:33." There was a stunned silence as the news set in. Allen Walker, the resident sleeper case, the inside joke of many as the hospital's own 'sleeper cell', was gone. He was dead. Never to have woken, not even once. He had died the same way he had lived. Asleep.

**T**he darkness was terrifying. He trailed his fingers out into the murkiness of it, feeling it pulse around him, lap at him, as if he were underwater. The warmth of it seeped into his skin, his muscles, even into his bones, as horrifying as the thought was. This wasn't supposed to be happening.

He was melting. And there was nothing he could do to stop it.

**L**avi was barely aware of the passing traffic as he made his way home to his apartment that night. As he parked his beaten up little Mazda in the tenant lot, his mind was preoccupied. It was as if a fog had settled in his brain, and he couldn't clear it out. He didn't understand why a single patient's death had affected him so greatly, when he'd seen so much death before. He found himself absentmindedly stroking the patch that covered his eye, a constant reminder of the short few years he's spent on a battlefield in some foreign desert, a young war veteran. He had been thankful at the time for his injury, taking away his usefulness in the fight, and numbing him from the heart shattering pain he had witnessed as a daily occurrence. He had been sent home, given a pension, and a notice telling him to find a job. He had put his year of medical training in the field to use, getting a nursing position at a local hospital before they had transferred him to St. Noir's. Life had been turbulent then, nothing like it had been in the past few years.

Lavi shook his head, as if to clear away the cobwebs of his past that his memories were forming in his brain. He never thought about what had happened while he was in Iraq; it was a useless walk down an even more hopeless path of shame. He got out of his car, and quickly made his way to the door of his building. His flat was on the third floor, just a quick jaunt up a few flights of stairs on a good day, and a grueling hike on a bad one. Reaching his door, he rummaged around in his pocket for the key, sliding it into the lock and entering the dreary little hovel that was his home. It wasn't much, and it didn't really need to be. He slid off his shoes and made his way down the dim hall, to a room at the very end. Inside was a mattress and a lamp. The only decorations were the mounds and mounds of paperbacks that rose up in preposterous stacks that towered far higher than anything else. Fiction and nonfiction alike, titles by authors young and old, Lavi had read it. Or was in the process of doing so. No matter how difficult the book, how tiny the print, how dim the light from his lamp was, Lavi loved to read. It was the one constant in his life, no matter how old he was or where he happened to be.  
He grabbed a copy off the top of his nearest stack, _Walden_, one of Thoreau's works. Transcendentalism. It was heavy stuff, but as he felt his mind getting sucked in to the rambling of one mad man, he soon forgot the other that was haunting his conscience.

**H**e was awake.

He wasn't sure how he knew he was awake, or even what being awake was, but he knew. He knew, just like he knew how to form coherent thought, or how to blink his eyes. And he also knew it was dark. An unspeakable fear filled him. He knew he didn't like the darkness. He tried to move his arms and legs, tried to thrash, tried to escape, but his limbs wouldn't respond. It was as if they were held down with lead weights, or as if they themselves were the lead weights. He could barely move them, or any of his body. It took all his strength to move even slightly, to shift his body even just a little. But it was that little movement that triggered it. He could hear around him, in a jarring cacophony of shattering glass and clattering metal instruments, and then he was falling. It wasn't a long fall, but still, his body hitting the floor was the most agonizing thing he had experienced. It was if every one of his nerve endings were on fire. Tears leaked from his eyes, cool on his face, and his sobs were silent.

"What the hell?" He froze as he heard the voice, if that was what it was. Yes, a voice, something that came from a human when they spoke. It was then accompanied by the sharp slap of footsteps on the floor. All while his mind was in shock from the senses he seemed to be experiencing for the first time, though his mind told him that wasn't right. He couldn't be experiencing this for the first time, he just couldn't He knew what things were, he knew what all these things he had seen and touched and tasted and felt were, but here his body told him differently. This couldn't be right.  
He was only roused by the sharp and painful feeling hands, roughly yanking down a zipper, the zipper on the body bag he was in. If he could have screamed, he would have. Light, so piercing it blinded him and left his eyes stinging presented itself. He tried to shut his eyes, but still, the vile light permeated his eyelids and left him weeping silently. The hands that had shoved him into this hellish state ripped away the bag from his body, manhandling him in such a way that made his already on fire nerves shriek in agony. He could only weep harder, his tears flowing down his face so hard that even if he had tried to see, he couldn't have.

"Oh my god. You're alive. You're alive," babbled the voice above him, breathy with panic. "What the hell do I do? Oh my god, they're going to have my ass for having a live on in a bag. I've got to call Lavi." The hands retreated from his body, giving him a moment of almost peace, as the unknown man, as he had identified the voice as male, moved to do something else.

"Yes, Lavi? Yeah, I need you to come in, right now... He wasn't dead…" He listened intently as some other voice replied to the man, from somewhere else. He could hear the voice get more and more agitated, though he couldn't make out the words. "Bloody hell, I don't know how it happened! I was just making my rounds, and then he sent all the cleaning jars and shit to the floor! I know he was dead when we put him in there. Just get your ass in here, I can't handle this alone!" The other voice cut off suddenly as there was a sharp slap of something closing, and the other man moved closer to him.

"What the hell is the world coming to?" the man asked, and he silently agreed. What was happening?

**H**urriedly, Lavi pushed a headband on, shoving his unruly red hair out of the way of his one good eye, and slung on his shoes as he ran down the stairs of his building. He hadn't understood half of Johnny's phone call, but something was up at the hospital, and he had some serious questions to ask.

It was only as he pulled into the parking lot, almost stalling out his poor abused car, that it dawned on him. Johnny had said he wasn't dead. That they'd made a mistake. But that couldn't have happened. He had confirmed the death, made sure the pulse was gone, even gone back later to double check. He'd made sure it was 100%. He should have been dead. He _had _been dead.

So why was Allen Walker alive?


	3. Chapter 2

**A/N: Sorry guys, I've had this written for forever, but between laptop issues and internet issues and hey, even job issues, getting this chapter up has been, well, an issue. I hope that now I'll be able to get up chapters more regularly, seeing as I have a bit more of an idea where this story is going now. Enjoy, this chapter might be short, but I've got more ready and waiting.**

**Disclaimer: No, I do not own this series, the characters, or really anything but the beef pot pie in my fridge that I think I'm gonna go make for lunch. **

**H**e didn't understand. He didn't want to. It was painful and everything hurt and he just wanted to curl up in a ball. But he couldn't. The hands had moved him to a bed, and had propped him up and stuck a needle in him. Which shouldn't have hurt, his mind told him, but it did. Everything was agonizing, even blinking his eyes, which had begun to adjust to the light. He couldn't form coherent thought, couldn't make them stop, couldn't even move more than a little before his will crumbled under the mind numbing agony his body seemed to be permanently experiencing. He tried to thrash, but it was a weak gesture, barely even a twitch.

"Whoa there. Easy, easy. You're okay." A voice came from above him, making him flinch imperceptibly. His body felt like it was shaking apart, though the shudders he perceived to be violent were barely tremors. His eyes opened minutely, and in the blazing light, he could make out blobs of color and movement. Red. The red kept coming back to him, stroking and prodding his inflamed skin, mumbling words to itself, and always, always, hovering.

"Johnny, I need you to get me 15 mg of morphine, we need to get his heart rate down. He's reacting like an intense burn patient." A shadow covered him, the red was bending over him. He could feel fingers combing through his…his hair. That's what it was. It didn't make sense to him, hair, but he knew what it was.

"You're gonna make it through, kid." Red whispered, and he hoped.

* * *

**L**avi didn't know what to feel. He was looking at, prodding, consoling, what had been a dead body hours prior, and before that, a coma case from hell. He could barely believe it was real. That Allen Walker, the boy who had never made a noise, was here, twitching, whimpering, living, even though the signs were miniscule. He was on the edge of shock, he could feel that, and the feeling of hysteria close by was what kept him moving. He had an IV in the kid as soon as he'd come into the room, and was checking his breathing, his heart rate, anything, to make sure that indeed, this wasn't some bad dream after all. Shaking his head, he looked down at his shaking patient, laying on the bed before him, and made a wish.

"You're gonna make it through, kid." He whispered, and he hoped that some higher power had heard him. Because as today was going, there had to be some god out there, with the animated corpse on the bed in front of him as his proof.

"Lavi, we gotta tell someone. He was dead hours ago. And now he's not." Johnny hissed, his voice filled with the hysteria that Lavi was fighting off.

"You're right. You should tell someone." The voice behind them made both of them jump, and Allen twitched on the bed. Lavi turned to face the man who had come in, his spine stiff.

"Bloody hell Lavi, what were you thinking? I have this kid's death certificate sitting on my desk. And he's definitely _not _dead." Reever shook his head, running his hands through his unruly blonde hair, as if that would solve the problem of the undead boy in front of him. Lavi wanted to wrap his hands around Reever's throat. It wasn't as if _his _job was on the line.

"Don't you think I've noticed that? Don't you think I've been asking myself the same questions about why a kid I certified as dead hours ago is breathing again? I double checked, Reever. I had Johnny check to. He was as dead as they get, had the whole unresponsive corpse thing going for him and everything." He couldn't keep the sharp edge out of his voice, even though he knew he'd pay for it later, after talking to his supervisor like that. As it was now, his mind was still consumed with Allen's presence. Reever sighed, and took a step closer to the bed. Lavi couldn't help that his spine stiffened further, or that his hands twitched at his sides. Reever checked the boy's pulse, his breathing, his eyes, everything Lavi had already done. Letting loose an even more suffering sigh, he turned away from Allen, only to let the full weight of his glare land on Lavi.

"I'll have to report this. It isn't going to look good for you, I'm afraid," Lavi held back all the biting retorts that burned his tongue, and nodded. "I'd even go so far as maybe looking into jobs elsewhere. This little stint with Walker is going to cost you. And as for him," Reever gestured to the body on the bed, which was now shuddering even more violently, "I'll ask that you detach him from any and all equipment and move him to the front lobby. You're free to go home after that."

"B-but sir, if you detach him from the IV, how's he supposed to stay alive?" Lavi couldn't help his nod, as he'd been wondering the same thing.

"And who said he's to stay alive, Mr. Gill? Allen Walker is dead, according to a certain stack of paperwork sitting on my desk. And he's going to stay that way."


End file.
